Category: Canada

In 2006, Canada languished at 12th place in Future Brand’s country brand rankings. But four years later, it has grabbed the coveted #1 Country Brand from the US. The rise to the top spot was aided in part by the legacy from the Vancouver Winter Olympics, and the strong Keep. Exploring brand. Congratulations CTC! It’s an honour to have been part of their Brand team.

Brüdder Productions produced a new short movie, entitled Anirniq (Breath in Inuktitut) as a submission to a global competition called Parallel Lines. The rules of the competition are that that films can only 6 specific lines of dialogue, in sequence. Shot in northern Baffin Island, the movie features gorgeous cinematography and a great interpretation of the dialogue.

Shane Koyczan’s slam poem “We Are More“, which he performed at the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, has proven to be very successful. The Canadian Tourism Commission commissioned Shane to write the poem in 2007 as part of the launch of Canada’s new tourism brand. The poem he performed was a shortened version. The full version is even better; the lyrics are available online, along with more information about Shane.

The iconic deHavilland Beaver bush plane is still flying all over the north, 62 years after it was first took to the air. Yet despite its iconic status, there are few good videos of this classic plane. Our film crew took the opportunity to take a Beaver into Nahanni National Park and shot some amazing air-to-air footage amongst some of the most beautiful backdrops in the country. Enjoy!

I love the endless possibilities of digital cameras, and timelapse photography is one great application. This timelapse video of Vancouver is an amazing example. Turn up your speakers and enjoy! it also happens to show off Vancouver at its best.

Check out the Draganflyer X8 – a new way to make aerial photography affordable! It is a small remote-controlled helicopter with a payload of about 1kg, perfect for a full HD video or still camera. It would be an amazing tool for shooting nature or wildlife from the air. The price is steep, but it is still a lot cheaper than renting a helicopter. And the company is Canadian (from Saskatoon) to boot.

Earlier this month Dr. Bill Pruitt passed away. He was called the father of North American boreal ecology, and one of the world’s leading experts on snow ecology. I had the fortune to work at his Taiga Biological Station near Walace Lake, Manitoba during a winter, helping his student Jim Schaefer track woodland caribou. We were out skiing transects every day in -30C weather, looking for caribou tracks. Never saw many tracks, let alone caribou. But it was great experience nevertheless. Pruitt recruited me at a conference with his famous line: “we can house you, we can feed you, but we can’t pay you.” That sounded good enough to me, and the field station was sufficiently remote, so jumped aboard a train for Winnipeg as soon as I could.

As mentioned in his obituary, Pruitt was a firm believer in true, old-fashioned fieldwork, spending as much time outside as possible. His motto was: “the quality of one’s data is inversely related to the amount of glass and metal in one’s surroundings”.

He was, however, a strong supporter of everything Finnish, including saunas. No field station was complete without one, and ideally it should be built first, so it was available during construction of other buildings.